Youth Disconnection in The Rapides Foundation Service Area, 2025
LAUNCHED NOVEMBER 24, 2025
Youth Disconnection in The Rapides Foundation Service Area 2025 provides an in-depth look at youth disconnection in The Rapides Foundation Service Area (TRFSA), which includes parishes in Central Louisiana. This report presents the latest available data on youth disconnection in a region designated by the US Census Bureau that covers seven of the nine parishes in TRFSA and one parish outside it. Two versions of this report were previously released: one in 2023 using data from 2021, and one in 2019 using data from 2017.
Disconnected youth are young people between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither working nor in school. Organizations that work with this population also use the term “opportunity youth” as a more optimistic phrase “that calls attention to the opportunities these young people seek and that should be opened up for them.”
The youth disconnection rate in TRFSA in 2023 is 21.7 percent, or 6,800 young people. TRFSA has a higher disconnection rate than Louisiana as a whole, which has the highest disconnection rate among US states and in 2023 has a disconnection rate of 14.9 percent.
KEY FINDINGS:
- Since 2021, TRFSA saw a 2.2 percentage point decrease in disconnection compared to a 2.8 percentage point decrease in Louisiana and a 1.5 percentage point decrease nationwide.
- More than one-third (38.6 percent) of all youth with a disability are disconnected in the region, 15.0 percentage points higher than the rate among youth with disabilities nationally.
- Of the 18,540 young adults ages 16 to 24 in TRFSA who have at least a high school diploma but no bachelor’s or higher degree, 2,200 have jobs that earn more than $40,000 annually. A whopping 84.1 percent of these well-paying middle-skill jobs are held by young men, and 15.9 percent are held by young women.
KEY ISSUES DISCUSSED IN THE REPORT:
- Characteristics of Connected and Disconnected Youth in TRFSA
- Youth Disconnection by Place
- Youth Disconnection over Time
- The National Context
- Limitations of the Data
The report is available in PDF form here.
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